Finland to boost web surveillance after Norway attacks

HELSINKI — Finnish police said Monday they will monitor the Internet more rigorously for evidence of extremists plots following last week’s twin massacres in neighbouring Norway.

Deputy police commissioner Robin Lardot said his forces will play closer attention to fragmented pieces of information — known as “weak signals” — in case they connect to a credible terrorist threat.

He told public YLE radio that Finnish police previously enhanced their online surveillance after a 22-year-student gunned down 10 people at a vocational school in the central town of Kauhajoki in September 2008.

The gunman in the Kauhajoki shooting, who also killed himself, had dropped hints about his plans before carrying out the attack, as in the Norwegian case, Lardot said.

In both cases “the perpetrators had a need to say that they were preparing something like this,” Lardot added.